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Week of decisions: calls from Anderson and Kellogg

By the time this week started I already was accepted to Booth, my top 1-2 choice (with Kellogg), so I was quite relaxed and confident.

First, I received an acceptance from UCLA Anderson, I tried not to visit GMATClub live thread too often and spend most of my day doing usual things (+Tuck Interview), so I they caught me off guard with their call and it was such a relief!

I don’t have a lot of MBA’s among the people I work with, so it was difficult to assess my chances, especially considering the ding from Wharton, where I believe my app was quite strong.

So actually receiving 2 admits was very important and powerful for my confidence, I knew that Booth acceptance wasn’t an anomaly but rather a reflection of my real standing in this process and with that Wednesday came and guess what: another accept! Northwestern Kellogg extended me an offer to join their class of 2018! Kellogg was my top choice actually, so this was a great call and I was ecstatic.

The rest of the week wasn’t as fruitful in terms of admits: I got WL by Duke Fuqua and has withdrawn my app, and Haas has dinged me without an interview. This actually raised some questions concerning my applications; I used different strategies that I would group as follows:

Booth / Kellogg

Wharton / Duke / Haas,

UCLA/Tuck

With MIT I just used my Kellogg essay, so I wouldn’t call it a strategy, I didn’t prepare well for their app and missed an opportunity with the optional essay.

It seems that my second strategy was a disaster, I had time and I submitted what I wanted, but something was missing. And I think it was the ‘essence’ that was missing, stories were about me, but they didn’t really draw one true picture of me, it was ‘a bit of this, a bit of that’, while my Booth/Kellogg essays were all linked by a common theme, that was present throughout the essays and I think these essays drew a single picture in the readers mind about who is that person they are reading about. But that’s just one theory, and I think it’s important to not confuse correlation with causation.